Many sport practitioners must shield parts of their bodies against harmful impacts. In particular, hockey, baseball, motor-cross and and paintball enthusiasts, commonly wear protective masks or helmets which cover and protect their entire heads from such impacts. Such covering, though protective, tends to restrict the passage of sound therethrough. Hearing sounds from the field of play can often determine the next move a player will make. It is therefore important that sound attenuation caused by the mask be minimized.
Existing designs such as those for baseball helmets, provide holes through the mask walls near the user's ears for sound passage. However, in many sports and in motor-cross and paintball gaming in particular, such holes would allow an inordinate amount of either mud or paint through to the user's ear. Further, these existing designs do not selectively boost sounds coming from a particular direction and attenuate sounds from other directions. Further, a user cannot adjust the direction of sound selectivity apart from movement of the user's head.
The present invention results from an attempt to accommodate both ear protection and the adequate passage of sound while providing some user control of sound direction selectivity.